If you run more than one store, catalog sync keeps the same products, packages, categories and vendors at every store. A change made at any store reaches the others within a minute: a new product, a new price, a renamed category, an edited package. Stock, bins and counts always stay with each store.

Catalog sync is off until an owner turns it on. It is available when 1sixty8 has set your stores up as one company; if Settings does not show a Multi-Store card, contact 1sixty8 Support.

Turning it on

Go to Settings > Multi-Store (owners only) and click Turn on catalog sync. Before anything changes, a catch-up page shows what will happen at each store:

  • Products, packages, categories and vendors a store does not have yet, which it will get. Clear the box beside a product to leave it out of that store. A product left out does not arrive later either.
  • Products that differ between stores, for example a different price or description. They all start from one store's values, the one picked under Start from. You can pick a different store for any single product.

Products are matched across stores by SKU, packages by name, vendors by name, and categories by name within the same parent. A product with no SKU stays at its own store only. A package is only copied if every product in it can come across.

Click the button at the bottom to bring the stores in step and turn sync on. A large catalog can take a minute or two. If it stops partway, running it again picks up where it left off.

How each store takes changes

Each store has three settings on the same page

  • Product details (name, description, brand, category, vendor, tags and the like): Automatic or Approval.
  • Prices and cost: Automatic or Approval. A category's pricing margins follow this setting too.
  • Min/max: Off, Automatic or Approval. Off is the default, so each store keeps its own stock levels unless you change it.

Automatic changes land within a minute. Approval changes wait on that store's Inventory Review until someone approves them; see Approving Changes from Your Other Stores. A brand new product always arrives complete, prices included, whatever the settings say.

Category and vendor details always sync automatically. A vendor's rep name, rep email and account number stay with each store, since each store usually has its own account and its own rep.

When two stores change the same thing

The later edit wins. If a store edits a field itself while a change from another store is still waiting for approval, the store's own edit counts and the waiting change is set aside.

Packages

A package's name, description and Active setting follow the product details setting. Its lines travel together, with each product matched to the receiving store's own copy. If only line prices changed, the prices setting applies; if lines were added, removed or swapped, the details setting applies. A change to both waits for approval unless both settings are Automatic.

What does not sync

Stock on hand, bins, counts and purchase orders; deleting a product or package (delete it at each store); whether a product is serialized, sold in bulk or stock-tracked; and the product a sales reminder suggests adding (the reminder's wording does sync).

Turning it off

Click Turn off on Settings > Multi-Store. Changes then stay at the store that made them. Turning it back on runs the catch-up again.